12 June 2008

Id Quod Volo

(That Which I Desire)

It's been too long since I posted so I'd like to make an update . . . Currently I'm going through an Ignatian retreat / formation period in Omaha and will be here until the end of August. Thus far it's been classes, classes, classes, and an 8-day silent directed retreat that ended only this past weekend. It's been incredible.

The feeling is like driving by a little patch of woods on the way to work day after day after day without ever noticing what's there, or even having the thought cross one's mind to be interested. In the blur of racing by on some mission to stave off boredom, it was nothing more than more brush and bracken in need of development. And then one day you are led through it and shown a little glade where in the middle of a busy suburb there is quiet, stillness, beauty, and peace. But not peace as the world gives. Peace of the sort meant to satisfy the deepest longings of the human heart, needs that cry out to heaven for satisfaction. There, scales fall from the world's face and the face that lies behind it is there, to be looked upon. There, the fragmented and incomplete knowledge I labor to accumulate is united in a supremely glorious being-known. There, being known is nothing to be feared, for it is the knowledge of the one whose relentless love is more devoted to me than I am to myself; were it not for this love, I would not exist. It is not my lovableness that calls down this love upon me. I am lovable because I first am loved.

Needless to say I've soaked in a lot of idiom and jargon here that never appealed to me before, but I've had to take it up to speak of what's been happening in me. To me. There's a good humiliation in that. All the soft God-talk I've always found uninteresting (and perhaps I've even despised it) is now all too common on my own lips. Now, I realize is that all along I've been listening in on a conversation about things I've never experienced. What sounded like empty emotional tripe was the attempt to put into words, in whatever inadequate way was available, the infinite love of God.

I stand corrected.

Look for some more book reviews coming up, including Mark Twain's Joan of Arc and Stephen Barr on Modern Physics and Ancient Faith.